Managing Image Files

Open the Manage Image Files dialog to define the image files for displaying logos in the camera. You can upload image files to the camera and store them in its permanent storage. Alternatively, the camera can automatically download an image file from a website (using the URL address).

The camera can display the following image file formats:

Portable Network Graphics (file extension .png)

Windows bitmaps (file extension .bmp)

Note: If you plan to display portions of the graphic transparently, it is recommended to use an indexed bitmap file with 256 colors or a PNG graphic with alpha channel and transparency.

Once you have loaded the desired image files in your camera or made available via URL, these images can be displayed as logo or watermark in the camera image. Open the Logo Profiles dialog.

Upload Image File

Select a logo file for uploading to the camera.

.png

The Portable Network Graphics format has been designed for use in the World Wide Web. It combines the advantages of GIF (compression without losses) and JPEG (high color depth). On top of this, it uses a patent-free and license-free compression algorithm.
PNG images can contain a transparent color as paletted image, if they are stored as greyscale or RGB images, they can contain an alpha channel, which defines for each pixel how much image background is visible.

.bmp

The Bitmap format is the standard format for graphic files under Microsoft Windows and is used for storing bitmap graphics without any loss. This format has a very simple structure, but it requires a lot of storage capacity.

The bitmap format is restricted in that it does not contain any information regarding transparency. Should you still want to save an image with transparent areas as bitmap, this image needs to be available as indexed 256 color bitmap. Then, you can select a color in this dialog that you want to be displayed transparently.

.tar

This format is no image file but an archive file saved by a camera, which may contain several image files. Use this format for backup purposes and for exchanging images files between cameras.

In case of Existing Image Files, select whether you would like to keep or overwrite existing files. If you select Keep, a new file will be created by adding a number to the file name.

Click on Browse to select the file on to your computer you would like to upload to the camera. To start the transfer, click on Upload.

Tips:

The Manage Image Files dialog displays the size and the remaining space for all user graphics in the Stored User Images section. Upon delivery, every camera has 243 kB free space for user images. Hence, a user graphic that is to be loaded into the camera cannot be larger than 243 kB. If user graphics have been saved, the free space is reduced accordingly and is displayed in the Free field and in the explanatory text for Image File.

User graphics should have a color depth of no more than 8 bits.

In order to create an indexed bitmap graphic with transparent areas it may help to fill the transparent images areas with a color that is not used in the rest of the image.

For a free-of-charge tool for creating and editing graphic files in the formats mentioned above under Windows, Unix, Linux and Mac OS X environments, go to www.gimp.org. Apart from several conversion possibilities, Gimp also allows you to find the index for the color that you want to display transparently.

To display the content of a .tar file, you can use e.g. WinZip, StuffIt or PowerArchiver.

View system images

The camera software already contains some image files. In order to view these system images, select a name. Click on Display to display the image in a separate preview window.

Stored User Images

This list contains the image files you have stored in the camera's permanent storage.

Click on a graphic file name to display this image in a separate preview window.

Click on Delete to delete this image file from the list of user images.

Displayed Information

The name, size and format for every image file are displayed in this list.

PNG images with alpha channel are marked in the Transparency by an alpha entry, for 256 color bitmaps, an additional selection field is displayed where you can set the color you would like to display transparently.

To configure transparency for bitmap images:

Select the index of the color you would like to set to transparent.

Click on the Set button.

The last line of this section displays information on the amount of storage space that the image files are using. Also, the remaining storage capacity for user data is displayed.

Download Image Files

Note:

This section is only available if you already have stored at least one image file in the camera's permanent storage.

You can store one or several image files as an archive file (.tar) on your local computer. In order to select several files, keep the Ctrl key pressed and select the desired files with your mouse.

You can either keep such an archive for backup purposes or upload it to other cameras.

Images Loaded From URL

The camera can be configured to download images from a website (URL) once after it has been rebooted or in predefined intervals. These files are saved in temporary storage and will thus only be available until the camera is rebooted.

Enter a name for the image. Only use letters, digits, dot, hyphen and underscore.

Enter the image's URL, e.g. http://www.mycompany.com/logo-small.png

Note:

The camera needs to be installed and configured in a way that the URL can be accessed either via an Ethernet or an ISDN Dial-Out connection.

Under Reload page, select either Off in order to load the files only once after the camera has been rebooted, or define the duration after which you want the image to be reloaded.

If access to the URL is protected by a user name and password, you need to enter these data in the respective fields.

For each image loaded from a URL, the following options are available:

Inactive

Deactivates loading of the image. The settings remain stored in the configuration.

Delete

Deletes this entry from the configuration.

Click on the Set button to start loading the first image file and to create another line.

After you have clicked on the Set button, the camera tries to load the configured images. You can display the current status of each image that has not been set to Inactive by clicking on . For this purpose, the transfer log file is displayed in a separate window. If successful, a link is displayed in the status window, which you can use to open a preview window with the image as is stored on the camera.

Storing the Configuration

Click on the Set button to activate your settings and to save them until the next reboot of the camera.

Click on the Factory button to load the factory defaults for this dialog (this button may not be present in all dialogs).

Click on the Restore button to undo your most recent changes that have not been stored in the camera permanently.

Click on the Close button to close the dialog. While closing the dialog, the system checks the entire configuration for changes. If changes are detected, you will be asked if you would like to store the entire configuration permanently.